


the man at the end of the pier

by belantana



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>When it comes down to it, Harry thinks, every little decision is important.</em><br/>Tom, Harry and shifting tides. Written for Yuletide'08. Set 2.04, allusions to later events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the man at the end of the pier

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/14778.html). With thanks to londonsophie for the beta.

When it comes down to it, Harry thinks, every little decision is important. He stares with disdain at the new consulting exercise Personnel have dreamed up, designed to assess and reorganise the division of duties. Of course, he'd prefer to send the survey back blank, with a scathingly polite reminder that he'd rather spend his time _doing_ the things he has to do than writing about what they are. But Personnel have been threatening to send around that godawful counsellor to do a psychiatric assessment of everyone on the Grid. He needs to keep them on side.

There's a knock on the open door. He raises a finger without looking up; knows by the silence that it is Tom, and the chink of glass which follows as he helps himself to a drink. He offers Harry one with a gesture.

Harry raises the finger again. 'In a minute.' He's writing _defending the realm_ in every single box, resisting the urge to scrawl _as above_ and be done with it. Nothing undermines pettiness like a lazy shortcut.

'What are you doing?'

'Dealing,' says Harry precisely, 'with paperwork.' He finishes with the audible thump of a full stop. Then, to press the point of timewasting squarely and securely home, he moves all the papers in his out-tray back into the in-tray and places the completed Personnel survey in the empty box. The in-tray sways precariously. He folds his hands behind his head and tips back on his chair, a man satisfied with a job well done.

Tom hands him a glass, wordlessly, but there is a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

'What will the DG do with you, for that?'

'If I have judged correctly, nothing.'

'And if you haven't?'

'Possibly post me to the Cayman Islands. But I am prepared to take the risk. I'm in need of a holiday.'

They're skirting around the issue, as usual. Tom won't bring it up but neither will he leave until Harry has decided whether it's to be a lecture, an argument, a subtle allusion or a dismissal. Harry, for his part, is in no mood to rush things. Tom is calmly skimming Danny's report on the bank job and giving off no signs of being wound-up or defensive. But Harry has known him for long enough now to understand that this means nothing at all.

\- -

27 April, 1995. It's the day Peter Wright died; or rather, the day that news of his passing trickled over from the other side of the world. Ten years ago, when his name was in the papers, Thames House was crying betrayal. But now the corridors bristle with sideways glances, unsure whether to mourn a past leader, scorn a traitor, or carry on as if that particular embarrassing part of history never happened.

Harry Pearce, newly head of Section D, shows Tom Quinn along the corridor to his office. Already he is faintly annoyed at himself for doing this initial briefing at all, and not just passing the responsibility on to Tessa or one of his senior officers. But he's heard things about Tom's time in Section C and he can't help but be curious about the man.

The building is compartmentalised like a giant beehive and Tom has never been on this floor. He watches with mild interest as two admin officers discussing the traitor's memoirs hurriedly change the subject at their approach.

Harry shuts the door and gestures Tom to a seat. 'There are girls in Registry afraid to even say his name in case they are arrested,' he says with dry amusement.

'Peter Wright?'

Harry glances skyward. 'Please tell me you didn't read that load of old rubbish.'

'I was just out of school. I read a lot of le Carré too.' Tom offers this with a slight note of apology, but he doesn't ask how much of Wright's memoirs are true, or affirm that he knows it's all lies. Harry senses aversion in the restraint. No; Tom wants to argue the other way, that Wright was just a bitter old man treated shabbily by the service. Harry allows himself a second idle moment of amusement.

'Well, he died a sheep farmer in a colonial outpost. I can see the romantic attraction.'

Tom smiles, and suddenly it's Harry who's given away more than he meant to – in that last statement, a hint that he's feared of a similar fate for himself, one day when age frays the last thread of his patience. Years of frustration spilling over into the public realm of a government which still believes in exile.

He is too clever to try to take it back, but he grimaces inwardly and readjusts his guard. Tom is watching him with an air of open blankness which is not belied by his voice or his eyes or the curve of his fingers in his lap. Harry realises, for the first time, that he is nowhere close to reading Tom Quinn.

\- -

Harry likes to think he gives Tom someone to rail against. While neither of them give an inch in a confrontation, Harry would be fool not to see how much the sands are shifting. He's the man at the end of the pier, watching the tide eroding one side and sandbanking the other. He tells himself that Tom is also moving towards a safer middle ground.

Today, he doesn't feel up to making a judgement on either of them. And so he slips out after the morning meeting and goes visiting.

Connie James answers the door in a cardigan and sensible shoes, the mud-spattered boots by the step telling of her morning. 'News from Russia?' she asks by way of greeting.

Harry sighs. 'No. Do I need an agenda to visit an old friend?'

She fixes him with a severe glare. 'I may be old, Harry, but I'm not befuddled enough to believe that you've suddenly taken to friendly visits.' Her face softens. 'Come in. I'll make tea.'

The glassy chimes in the window chink reproach at Harry's intrusion, like a wary animal. He shoulders off his coat.

'And how is your protégé?' Connie asks, once the pleasantries have been dealt with and the news exchanged. No names mentioned of course.

Harry gives her a sharp look over his cup and she rolls her eyes at him. 'Oh come on, Harry, I lost interest in spying on your section when I left the service. You always have a protégé. I assumed.'

He considers whether to take offence at her appraisal of his predictability, then reminds himself of the usual result of taking offence from Connie.

'My protégé,' he says, 'has just sent someone on a long holiday.'

He speaks lightly, but Connie misses nothing. She reaches across to pour more tea. 'A one-way holiday?'

'Most likely.'

'With sunbaking and sightseeing?'

Harry closes his eyes briefly and recalls Tom's words as he sent Gradic on the flight to Egypt: _Do you know what they do with men like him, there?_

'For everyone else,' he answers.

'I see.'

'Yes.'

'Was it deserved?'

Harry puts down his cup for a moment and rubs his face in his hands. 'Yes. But that's not the reason he did it.'

'Ah. I understand your problem.'

'Misplaced revenge. The man he wanted was already dead.'

Connie purses her lips, pleating the wrinkles, and for half a second Harry forgets himself and expects her to come out with an old granny tut-tut noise.

'And you authorised it?'

'I did nothing.'

'As good as.'

'I had... emotions involved too. It wasn't my most clear-headed decision.' He pauses. 'Revenge. For an old friend.'

He meets her eyes, and it is not the years of shared history or Connie's silver hair or the cracks in the teapot, but the qualifier in _old friends and old enemies_ which makes him feel his age.

Connie drops her gaze and brushes an invisible crumb from the linen tablecloth.

'Then, Harry,' she says efficiently, 'it is up to you to decide if he'll let his emotions into his work again.'

\- -

He won't do it again, Harry tells himself. He's had a few more measures of whisky than he can count on one hand now, but he knows the decision is a sober one. Harry's revenge was for his long-dead best friend. It has been paid. Tom's revenge was for Ellie and Ellie has gone now, taking her hysterical demands and clingy child with her, good riddance.

He tries to imagine, briefly, the expression on Ellie's face if she knew what Tom had done in her name. It is difficult. The women in Harry's life have been made of various degrees of steel, keeping things in the comfortably familiar field of retorts and spiteful games. He imagines Juliet and his wife in his office now, arching identical unimpressed eyebrows at the news. He yields to a wry smile. Even with the mess that both those relationships ended in, he can be glad that at least they never met.

Suddenly, with the sluggish lurch of the drink hitting him, he's smirking at a different woman. It's the new girl, Ruth, with an expression of such naive horror on her face that the smile drops and he shifts uneasily. The vision is gone in a second but her look stays with him. Her eyes are at once accusation, revulsion and pity.

He slides his gaze to the right, and has no doubt that this is Tom's vision of Ellie.

Tom faces her blankly; no apology. He's still leaning up against the wall but Danny's report sits forgotten in his hand, and his indifferent manner is all slips and distance, everything betrayed. Harry sighs. He casts a tired eye over the empty Grid and wonders what happened to keeping it all in the family. He disapproves of relationships within the service, of course, but he disapproves of relationships outside of the service a whole lot more. Perhaps this is a lesson Tom needs to learn.

He stands and refills the glasses. 'Zoe did well with Rado,' he offers.

It is a long moment before Tom responds, dragging his eyes from the ghost in front of him and back to the present. He tips his head a little and smiles sideways at Harry. Another silence.

'It was Ruth.'

'What?'

'The mole.'

Harry puts the bottle down on the desk, slowly, and leans into it with exaggerated exhaustion. 'I expected as much,' he sighs heavily. 'Get rid of her.'

'I've offered her a second chance.'

'You have, have you?' Harry notices his voice quicken with anger, but doesn't temper it. 'And what exactly does this section have to gain from fostering a GCHQ mole in its midst?'

'She's brilliant, Harry.'

'Ah. Well then.'

It annoys him, somewhat, that Tom has none of his usual urgency when disagreeing or pressing a case. He cradles the glass and leans nonchalantly into the shadow of _regnum defende_ as if already sure of his success.

'She won't do it again.'

'Hm.'

'And we have her in a compromising position, should she consider it.'

Harry raps the desk in indignation. 'I will not condone blackmailing – '

He breaks off. Harry Pearce, the pragmatist, for whom no one and nothing is off-limits – and Tom's smiling at him again with all of his body except the smile itself, and Harry, not for the first or last time, is outmanoeuvred. He sinks into his chair and puts his head in his hands.

'All right. She can stay.'


End file.
